Worth A Thousand Words
by Stoko
Summary: Episode Tag for Point Of ViewAffinity. Jack thinks about what might've been.


**Episode Tag for the Season 8 episode Affinity**

**Spoilers: Season 3 - Point Of View, Season 8 - Affinity**

**Worth A Thousand Words**

Kim Stevens wasn't having the best day. Her alarm hadn't gone off, her car hadn't started, and only after an entire hour of working had someone quietly mentioned she had lipstick on her teeth. All in all, she just wanted to crawl away and have the coffee she had been so cruelly denied that morning.

She checked the clock, there was only 10 minutes left until she could cut out for lunch. Her boss liked her, and it was a slow day, maybe she could just...

"Hey Pam, mind if I go on my break early? I've just had this really bad day..." she began, trying to justify herself. But she was cut off by Pam's cheery smile.

"Of course dear, you do seem a bit off today. Hope you feel better," Pam replied politely, moving away towards her office.

Kim smiled, but inside she was dancing for joy. She was just about to get her coat when a customer walked in. Looking to see if there was anyone else she could grab to serve him, she came up empty.

_'Oh well'_,she thought as she began the textbook greeting, _'he is kinda cute'_.

"Hi, welcome to Kodak, how may I help you today?" Kim said with a smile that was partly false and courteous, partly a genuine reply to the smile the man was giving her.

"Hi, I need a copy of a picture?" the man replied, reaching into his pocket to carefully retrieve a slightly worn photo.

_'Damn, he must be married, too bad,'_ she thought as she saw the picture he offered to her. It was quite clearly a picture of the man's wedding.

"No problem sir, we can do that while you wait, it only takes a minute. That's $4.99 please," she said as she placed the picture into a specialised scanner set up just behind her desk. A few clicks of a mouse later, and she was just waiting for the new picture to be produced in the back.

Struggling to come up with something to say to fill the silence between them, Kim settled on a compliment.

"She's a beautiful bride, the two of you look very happy together," she commented, noticing the man tense a little.

"Yeah, you could say that..." he trailed off, seeming oddly uncomfortable about the subject.

Not sure what else to say, Kim waited patiently for the computer to tell her the job was completed. She hurried off into the back room to collect the photo for the man's inspection, after all, the sooner he left happy, the sooner she could do the same.

"That's great, thank you," the man said, putting both pictures away and turning to leave.

But there was just one more thing Kim needed of him before he (and also she) could slip away.

"Could I just have your name for our records?" she asked, ready to enter his name into the database and be done with her foul morning.

"Sure," the man replied.

"Jack O'Neill."

_Five Years Later_

_"You know, all these years I've been concentrating on work, I just assumed that one day I would..." she'd been saying, until I cut her off._

_"Have a life?" I'd questioned._

_"Yeah," she'd said, seeming almost surprised at the admission._

_"Yeah..." I'd replied, in a much softer voice._

_Continuing as though she hadn't stopped speaking she'd said, "And now it comes down to it I don't know. I mean, every time we go through the 'gate, we risk not coming back. Is it fair to put somebody else through that?"_

_"Pete is a cop, I think he could handle it." I'd said, wondering at the time how many other barriers she'd created between her and happiness._

_"What about kids?" she'd asked, almost making the question sound like a challenge._

_"What about 'em?" I'd asked, unfazed._

_"Do I take maternity leave and then come back? What, do I drop the baby off at day-care on my way to some unexplored planet on the edge of the Crab Nebula?" she'd replied, the gaps between her words becoming less and less recognisable as she went on._

_"Carter... there are people on this base who have families." I'd said in a slightly exasperated tone._

_She'd paused then, taken a deep breath, as if she were moving on to a much bigger question._

_"What about you? If things had been different..." she finally asked, this time cutting herself off._

_"I wouldn't be here," I'd said, stretching out the word 'here' to mean this conversation, as opposed to 'here' in general._

_"Thanks sir... Jack..." she'd replied, and I took that as my cue that the conversation was over._

_"Any time, Sam," I'd said, squeezing her shoulder lightly and taking my leave._

Of course, that was earlier today. Since then I'd heard from Daniel that she'd decided to say yes to Pete's proposal. I think she's still working up to telling me herself. Ever since I got home, I couldn't get her last question out of my head.

_"What about you? If things had been different..."_

For most people, that'd just be a phrase, wishful thinking, a 'what-if'. But not for us. We know, for a fact, that in at least two alternate realities we ended up together. And although she never saw it, and even though we never discussed it, I've got the proof.

I've been looking at it for a while now, a copy of a picture that captured an event that never happened. 'What if?', she asks? This is the reply.

This one little picture, taken so long ago in a place further away than most people dream of, shows me that it could've happened. Somewhere, some way, it could and it did, all the infinite possibilities given shape and meaning in one little picture.

S'gotta be worth more than a thousand words in anyone's book, eh?

**A/N: OK, this has been bouncing around in my mind for ages. Since the 25th of August 2004, to be exact. I know it's lame, I spend way to much time on the Kim character; I don't know if Kodak can copy a photo that easily now, never mind in 1999; I know for a fact they wouldn't need your name for their records unless it was a credit card transaction, in which case it'd be on their copy of the receipt; the contemplation part is quite rushed and I'm still not 100 sure about the past tense in the episode flashback. Not to mention all this criticism I chucked into the author notes :P**

**But hey, apart from all that, hope you enjoyed it :D**


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